“Apple is looking beyond augmented reality in the long run, as a new patent filing suggests the company has examined the potential of full virtual reality kits not just for product testing, but for consumers as well,” Mike Wuerthele reports for AppleInsider.

“Patent application 15/485,804 was made public on Wednesday, and addresses dynamic modification of images, to present it, and relevant text-based data, to a user in real-time,” Wuerthele reports. “The patent application is applicable to static and moving images, both in a limited field of view, and encompassing all of the X, Y, and Z axes for a full panorama of vision.”

“Few actual technical details are present in the patent application, as is the case with most patents,” Wuerthele reports. “Apple’s implementation in the patent relies on OpenGL and Metal, and both routines use of SpriteKit, Core Animation, and Core Graphics.”

MacDailyNews Take: Apple patents all kinds of things. This could be something for internal use only, something that never sees the light of day, something that debuts at WWDC 2018 for sale to end users, or something else entirely.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]